Article printed from SiteProNews: http://www.sitepronews.com
  HTML version available at: http://www.sitepronews.com/archives.html

Article Syndication - A New Vehicle for King Content
By Sharon Housley


It's All About Content Syndication

Creating Content
New websites are being launched daily. In order to compete, 
webmasters need to find alternative ways of producing themed 
websites. Highly focused articles are often sought by webasters. 
Why? Because content on the web is still king! In order to 
attract search engines and site visitors, webmasters rely 
heavily on providing new, innovative and fresh content. If the 
website content is rich, visitors will come. If the website 
content is updated regularly, visitors will return. When 
evaluating a website's traffic it is easy to see that the low 
cost of syndicated content can increase a website's value. Sites 
that contain multiple pages related to a specific topic increase 
the likelihood of being 'found' when a variety of search phrases 
are used for that topic.  

By creating a niche resource, webmasters are viewed as industry 
experts and their websites are more likely to receive incoming 
directory links. A number of publishers provide free content, 
the only stipulation being that the webmaster serving the 
content must include the author resource box. Webmasters 
utilizing free content can easily create portals teeming with 
themed content.  

Unlocking the Key to RSS
Many webmasters are struggling to find fresh, innovative content 
while other savvy webmasters have realized the potential hidden 
within RSS and are adopting the technology at a maddening pace. 
By utilizing RSS, webmasters can tap numerous free content 
sources with very little effort. RSS truly is a webmaster's key 
to free content.  

Webmasters interested in taking advantage of RSS have a number 
of resources available to them:  

GoArticles is a free content article directory with more than 
20,000 articles available for syndication. Recently GoArticles 
added a feature that will allow webmasters and site owners to 
add dynamically updated article headlines to their sites by 
simply adding a single line of java script into their webpage. 
More than 100 articles are added daily to GoArticles. The 
content is refreshed and indexed every 3 hours, so new articles 
are updated on the site 8 times a day. Webmasters looking for 
content can include theme-based RSS feeds into their site, using 
java script supplied by GoArticles. The java script accesses an 
RSS feed that contains the article headlines on the GoArticles 
site.  

GoArticles has 64 article categories, making it easy for 
webmasters to find content that suits their interest. Webmasters 
can select either the most recent articles in a specific category 
or the most popular articles in a specific category. As new 
articles are added to the GoArticles directory, the content on 
the websites using the java script will dynamically update. 

Additional details at: http://www.goarticles.com

Example of a site using GoArticle's feed - 
http://www.small-business-software.net/goa-seo-headlines.htm 

Another article resource webmasters may find useful is Article 
Central's tracker script. Webmasters can easily insert java 
script into their website to list all of Article Central's new 
articles or site owners can customize the tracker code to list 
only those articles chosen from the article repository's article 
category list. Articles relate to web development, design and 
technology-related issues and are updated daily.
 
Additional details at: 
http://thewhir.com/find/articlecentral/tracker.asp  

Example of a site using Article Central's feed - 
http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com/articledirectory-headlines.htm
 
Content syndication is a win-win for both the publisher and the 
webmaster. As a result of these new distribution opportunities 
provided by GoArticles and Article Central, publishers will 
receive increasingly more exposure for their articles and 
webmasters will have a new source for fresh content. 

Webmasters interested in creating dynamic content from other 
free sources can use the free service provided by Feed2JS. All 
webmasters need to do in order to display the RSS feed on a 
website is enter the URL of the RSS source. Feed2JS creates java 
script that can be inserted into the HTML of the site owner's 
webpage. Webmasters are also given control over how their 
content is served, meaning they can customize the look and 
appearance of the headlines.  

Additional details at: 
http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/feed/index.php?s=build 

Example of site using Feed2JS - 
http://www.feedforall.com/rss2java-rssblog.htm 

Search engines are increasingly looking for theme-based portals 
by having specific targeted content where Webmasters are likely 
to be defined as industry experts. RSS is a free and easy way to 
promote a site and its content without the need to advertise. 
RSS is defined specifically for syndication; in fact the acronym 
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. This means that 
webmasters serving RSS content do not need to negotiate 
complicated content sharing partnerships in order to use content 
contained within an RSS feed.  

In order to completely understand the power and potential of 
RSS, webmasters may want to visit the following resources: 

RSS Specifications - everything you need to know about RSS - 
http://www.rss-specifications.com 

Feedster - locate RSS feeds that are topic specific 
http://www.feedster.com 

FeedForAll - create RSS feeds from your own content 
http://www.feedforall.com 

RSS4U - free online RSS reader http://www.rss4u.com
FeedDemon - desktop RSS reader - http://www.feeddemon.com

================================================================
Sharon Housley manages marketing for the NotePage 
http://www.notepage.net and FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com 
product lines. Other sites by Sharon can be found at 
http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com , and 
http://www.small-business-software.net  
================================================================

Copyright © 2004 Jayde Online, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.

SiteProNews is a registered service mark of Jayde Online, Inc.